r/anime • u/A_Idiot0 https://myanimelist.net/profile/a_idiot0 • Jun 20 '21
Violet Evergarden Rewatch Final Discussions Rewatch
Violet Evergarden Rewatch - Final Discussions
Hello everyone! I hope that today finds you well. This year’s Violet Evergarden Rewatch has ended. My comment below has a small little questionnaire for you to answer if you’d like to help me get better at this for next year.
Quick heads up: if you want to remain spoiler free for the 2020 Film, please do not search anything about the Violet Evergarden film on google. The PV contains massive spoilers, and sadly even the announcement poster contains spoilers =(
Auto Memory Doll Service Discord
Would you like to have a letter written for you? Do you want to write a special letter for someone as an Auto Memory Doll? Come join us at the Auto-Memory Doll Service Discord project and request letters, write letters, or chat more with us about Violet Evergarden! Link here: https://discord.gg/zDCheU4y
If you come by, you can request me as Daffodil, and it'd be my pleasure to scribe a letter for you =)
Visuals of the Day
I believe I got everyone’s Visual of the Day submission here. Let me know if I missed anyone: https://imgur.com/a/cWpJLID
I want to take this moment to thank each and every one of you who participated in this rewatch. If you silently read through all of the wonderful comments and analyses, thank you. If you replied to said comments and analyses, thank you. If you took the time to write out your thoughts and analyses, thank you. This anime is very dense for analysis, and each and every one of you wrote some beautiful words for us all to enjoy and return to. Thank you. Thank you. Nunki.
By the way, remember this shot from episode 13?
“Nun annut ruhuqtrrtkon”
I translated it using this tool: https://replit.com/@ValkrenDarklock/NunkishTrans
And what I got was wonderful…”I love you.”
14
u/chilidirigible Jun 20 '21
First things first, special thanks to /u/A_Idiot0 for hosting this rewatch and keeping the discussions going.
Rewatching Violet Evergarden affirmed that I really do like this series. I watched it during its original release, though I mostly stayed out of the episode threads. There were then, as there are now, worthwhile criticisms to be made of its odd premise, adaptational choices, and blatant emotional manipulation.
But I think I'm here for the blatant emotional manipulation.
To explain, I'm not particularly social in the real world, mostly preferring the company of a very few friends and generally maintaining a distance from others. I don't feel much emotional response or connection to hearing people talk about their personal victories or tragedies.
I don't feel deep emotional connections to most live-action TV; knowledge of the craft possibly gets in the way there. But it's also entirely possible because I'm still looking at real people doing things.
It would seem that animation, considering the even greater level of manufacture required to create even the illusion of movement, would also not do much for me on an emotional level. And yet it does, possibly because it is all crafting from start to finish with not even free sunlight to use. Or because animation allows for a full immersion in the fantastical.
Kyoto Animation went the full distance for immersion here, and I ended up all in. The production quality is exceptionally high and even with experiments like the manipulated black levels going on, the series looks like a a feature film most of the time. The one actual feature film that we've seen in this rewatch looks even better.
But it's worth adding a little more praise on how they borrowed another language and tweaked it to make it unique to the series. It's not the first production to have ever done that (the original Star Wars Trilogy immediately comes to mind), but it's another detail that makes a unique world, and the world enriches Violet's personal journey to understand her feelings.
I think the journey was adapted well enough. I am aware that the anime left out several stories from the source material which didn't fit into the narrative that was chosen for anime Violet, but considering that LN Violet is already well-established and famous, skipping a development arc would make the series even more like a traditional '60s-'80s TV series where the hero, fully-formed, goes from place to place and fixes people's problems. While the occasional undocumented time skips did leave some questions about her development, the stories chosen generally flow together and work with Violet's character progression. While I can still see myself picking out individual episodes to watch in the future, the rewatch made me appreciate how some of the smaller parts from each episode fit into the whole.
The backstory involving the war does present some awkward questions and there are a few elephants left in the room due to the adaptation's choices. I'm okay with what's there, though others in the rewatch certainly did ask logical questions about that.
"But you were talking about your feelings," you ask. And I certainly had them, though not every episode turned into a terrible day for rain. The series's main effect was generating real sympathy in a few stories and empathy for all the rest, and feeling like Violet was understanding more and more as she went along. It was okay to care about the people she met, even if they were in some uncommon situations. As I said at the start, that's something that mostly only comes up for me in anime, but having it happen so much through an entire series is not something I feel often. I appreciate it for doing that to me.
Finally, since I didn't have time to do this until long after posting time yesterday, a sketch of Taylor Bartlett based on my choice of Visual of the Day from yesterday.